


Feather-like messages

by roguelightning



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 17:43:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12916977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguelightning/pseuds/roguelightning
Summary: Someone has been sending feathers to Nikola. Pigeon feathers, no less! If only he could figure out what they were trying to say...





	Feather-like messages

**Author's Note:**

> Alright so sam-jack-loveforever requested a drabble/ficlet with Secret Admirer and well. I have a master's degree in Cryptography and my hand may have slipped a bit?

It starts off rather innocently. If it wasn’t for his obsession with order, he wouldn’t have even noticed. The feathers were there, however. Fifteen of them, spread around his laboratory as if it was an accident. He decides to ignore it at first. Maybe it was just the window he had left open or something.

The second time, the feathers await him between his notes, eighteen of them, and he discovers them right before starting his lecture. Any inquiry about who put them there proves to be futile. It worries him a bit now, because his notes had been left unsupervised for too little for someone to meddle with them. And still, the feathers are there, again in a number that is divisible by three, so he starts to take the whole thing a bit too personal.

The third time he finds the feathers, it’s the night before he dies, and for a second he thinks it’s the FBI messing with his head. Still, pigeon feathers, 21 of them? It doesn’t look like something the agency would spend money for, not to mention that if they really knew where he was hiding, they would have come with guns and not with feathers.

It’s only the fourth time when he actually panics. He’s been in hiding for ages now, with no one to know his whereabouts, not even Helen, which is saying something, so there is simply no logical explanation for the little bouquet of feathers that waits for him in a catacomb, tied neatly with a copper wire. This time, there are 2 of them, and he is tempted to laugh at the fact that apparently whoever has been doing this has run out of feathers… problem is, he finds them inside a vampire artifact somewhere underneath Paris, an artifact that hasn’t been theoretically touched in over 2000 years.

And then, just like that, the messages, if that is what they really are, stop. There is a weird part of him that misses them, not that he would ever admit that, but he figures that whoever had done this probably died. It was about damn time, actually, he thinks. But one night, after he loses his powers, the concierge at his hotel hands him a red envelope. He traces it back to a young girl who has been paid by a man, who has been paid by another woman… He reaches a dead end soon enough, because apparently whoever sent them has made the payment online from an offshore account, registered to a certain Julia Sessum.  A fake name, obviously, except for the fact that Sessum is Sumerian for six… and Sumerians were the only ancient civilization who had nothing to do with vampires. That meant whoever had sent him the envelope knew of his devamping. He almost throws the envelope away in frustration before discovering the eleven feathers inside it.

The sixth time he finds feathers, it’s after he gets his powers back, and he almost misses them after running away from Afina, because he’s had the best night in his life- well, except Vienna, of course, and Helen may have or may have not kissed him, and alright, she had 5 pigeon feathers on her windshield, but he managed to snatch them before she noticed, so really there was nothing to be concerned for… right? He’s not able to sleep properly a long time after that, because apparently Julia knows Helen too, and that is a whole new type of bad news.

The seventh time, he’s not even sure he finds them. He hopes to God he didn’t, though, because the Praxian interface has simply no excuse to have 21 pictograms that look suspiciously like pigeon feathers next to each other, and the fact that it’s Adam’s interface clearly doesn’t help matters. The easiest explanation is that Adam was the one who kept doing this, and it makes sense in hindsight, the cryptic side and the fact that this has been going on for so long. Still, he has never been one to be satisfied with easy solutions, but he has bigger issues on his mind at the time, so he leaves it at that for now.

The eight and last time he finds a feather, it’s in Helen’s new Sanctuary, and he almost goes to tell her about everything, because this is really a threat to her security. But then, a simple fact hits him: there are only a handful of people who know about the new Sanctuary, and only two of them have been alive long enough to send and to receive feathers, respectively.

Henry glares at him as if he had just seen a madman when he snatches a sheet of paper and starts to scribble furiously, but none of it matters as he lists the number of feathers he had received each time. 15. 18. 21. 2. 11. 5. 21. 1. It’s not a progression, despite the fact that it starts as one, and it’s not a series of dates. He turns the numbers into letters, but it’s only gibberish. Orubkeua. Well _fuck you too_ , he thinks, until he realizes who the one who sent him this was. Julia Sessum, or rather, Julia six. He snatches the feather from his desk and practically runs to Helen’s office.

“Really, Helen?” He asks in disbelief as he slams his palm on her desk, placing the offending feather on it.

“What?” She asks innocently, but he doesn’t miss the gleam in her eye.

“You could have just said it, you know.” He pouts, but he can’t find it in himself to be mad on her.

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“Very funny, Helen. Or should I say Julia? I had no idea you like Italians so much. I almost feel offended, but we’re talking old ones here so I’ll give you a break.”

“Who’s this Julia, again?”

“ _This_ Julia, to quote you, is an infuriating, albeit gorgeous British woman who I swear to God will be the death of me one day.”  He mutters, his gaze not leaving hers. “One who apparently thought it was a fun idea to take the name of a Roman emperor and to torment me for decades with a little puzzle.”

“I see.” Helen said. “Well, I have no idea who she is.”

“Well, when you meet her, tell her that I am appalled that she used the Caesar cipher, not to mention she put together a part of the message with the key itself, you don’t do that.”

“Noted.” Helen says calmly, closing the distance between them. “As I said, I don’t know this Julia, but if I did… she’d probably say that for someone who cracked the Enigma machine, it took you long enough.” She admonishes him, probably waiting for some snarky comment in return. Instead, she finds herself pushed into the opposite wall, his lips crushing hers.

“Is this an <<I love you too>>?” She asks when they finally stop to take a breath. It’s his turn to smile, now.

“More like, I’m still pissed but I may consider forgiving you if you tell me how the hell you put pigeon feathers inside an ancient artifact.” He says, kissing her briefly on her lips before descending to her neck. “Also, of course, you silly.” His lips apparently find a particular spot on her neck and he sucks gently there, before moving further down. “Also, you taste delicious, but I am so encoding your files and if you think you’ll get away with Caesar only you have another thing coming, love.”

**Author's Note:**

> Alright quick lesson in (kinda) cryptography for those who need it xD. Caesar cipher is a way of encrypting messages. Basically you take each letter in the alphabet and you replace it by the letter that is n places after it. So if n=3, for example, instead of a you put d, instead of b you put e, and so on. Also, when you reach the end, you start over, so z would become c.


End file.
